Cult of the Inner Light
The cult of Inner Light is a new-age Wolgos faith that emerged in the southern Shangti archipelago, more precisely, the island of Khudat. The faith has some cosmological ideas from Dlroch'veldr and Akchacknism. From akchakanism, the faith borrows the ideas of a celestial firmament but expands on it by proposing the existence of a worldly firmament. Dlroch'veldr, the faith borrows the concept of ethereal spirits that inhabit both firmaments or realms as the faith calls them.
Unique to the faith is the lack of a conscious, powerful deity or deities; instead, the faith proposes that life, creation and the very essence of the soul and spirit arise from the conjunction of the essentially static and dead worldly realms. Both realms are intrinsically incompatible, and only through a will can they form a conjunction, the conjunction representing the creative chaos of existence with its manifestation of light. To the faith, light is the pure essence of existence, life and creation. Syncretic Wolgos view the conjunction as the emanation of Dlrocha and light as his manifestation and will of creation. Meanwhile, syncretic Akchacknism views the conjunction as the fire within the celestial deities coming into being and its light as permeating the cosmos and celestial firmament.
Hominidity is seen as occupying a tangent below the conjunction on the earthly realm, close to the conjunction to be alive and conscious but adjacent to the worldly realm, where all must return to a dead state through a process of physical and spiritual decay. Light cannot permeate the opaque worldly realm, and as such, within its sphere lies only death and spirits, staving off their demise by pulling hominid souls to the depths of the realm to devour. Only the celestial realm can be permeated by light, and its spirits glow and illuminate the hominid tangent.
The faith rejects emotions and physical drives that harm others and the hominid tangent, which it believes emanates from the will of worldly realm spirits. Practitioners must actively reject them and conduct rituals to purge the souls and achieve spiritual catharsis. The purity and enlightenment of the celestial spirits of light are sought through meditation and spiritual purging to seek exaltation from the tangent and closeness with the loci of the conjunction of the realms.
History
Cosmology
Non-Existence
Non-existence is the metaphysical boundary of all there is. Beyond the realms, nothing lies, not even a void as understood by hominids, but truly nothing, no death, no life, no intelligence, just a complete lack of reality and a domain beyond conceptualisation. The light that pierces into non-existence nourishes nothing, fills nothing, lights up nothing, and loses all meaning and conceptualisation.
Celestial Realm
The celestial realm is a metaphysically translucent sphere and is the realm of dormant higher beings. Since creation, the celestial realm has been filled with the light and essence of life emanating from the conjunction. The realm has been awoken and the beings are active and exalted, serving as a guide and illumination for the path of exaltation to the loci of creation. The beings from the real do not interact with the beings of the tangent; they bear no ill will and serve as an example of harmony.
Worldly realm
The worldly realm is the sphere of the physical, the perpetually dead, and it is a realm metaphysically opaque that the essence of life light cannot penetrate beyond the shallows of the realm. The realm is home to beings that are eternally dormant due to the lack of life; only those closest to the conjunction are active and ravenous. They seek to thrive and beckon the souls of hominids that, having been bathed in light, will satiate the hunger; they beckon souls by obscuring their path to the loci of creation and sinking them beyond the tangent and surface of the worldly realm.
Dark impulses and emotions are the manifestation of their will, and only by purging them can the dark mist on the path to the loci be driven from one's path.
Conjunction
The conjunction is where both spheres of reality meet; the antithetical spheres of creation meeting produce metaphysical friction at the loci of creation where the spheres meet, and the infinite repulsion from the spheres and friction leads to the light, the essence of light that animates reality. Light is pure, and the chaos leads to renewal and dynamicity, which is what drives time, life, and nature.
Loci of creation
The Loci of Creation is the infinitely small point between the spheres and where the antithetical metaphysical forces of the spheres are at their strongest. A point whose infinite pureness and powers make it infinitely hard to reach, but only through this point can exaltation happen to the celestial side of the hominidity tangent. In the celestial side, exaltation has been achieved, and immortality as a serene being is lived at the highest point of catharsis for eternity.
The Tangent
The tangent is the surface point of the spheres where they meet, adjacent to the loci of creation. On the Worldly side of the tangent is where existence, as known by hominids, exists in the infinitely small point under the loci. The worldly side is perpetually hazardous as the souls of hominidity are the prey of the beings of eternally dead innards of the worldly sphere that liberate the soul through physical and spiritual decay into their maws of eternal death.
Only through exaltation via the loci of creation can a hominid reach the celestial tangent. In the celestial tangent, serene and wise beings achieve perpetual catharsis.
Light
Light is the manifestation of the ethereal force and chaotic energy emanating from the loci of creation. The energy that animates the tangent, the spheres and drives all processes such as nature, time, and thought. Light is not just experienced through visual, physical light but through metaphysical light experienced through earthly catharsis achieved in spiritual purging, sexual orgasm, oere and deep meditation.
Exalted beings
Alinyoun taquu
Practices
Spiritual purging
Alinyoun taquu taught that the Wolgos and, to a similar extent, humans are perpetually challenged by the beings of the worldly realm who seek to feed on their souls. Hominids are actively corrupted by urges that lead to discord between each other, encouraging spiritual decay and physical decrepitude that hastens the path to death and the loss of one existence to the maws of the dark, worldly beings.
Hominids must push aside these emotions and urges, meditating to control them and achieve emotional composure, asceticism, and self-denial as the path to enlightenment. Nevertheless, the urge to hurt, destroy, enjoy suffering, perversely control and metaphysically consume each other and nature, and their many physical and emotional expression can cause inner conflict as they become overwhelming.
When urges and emotions become overwhelming, the soul becomes disorientated with pent-up energy, and one must not unleash and indulge as it will only decay the spirit. Wolgos and humans must purge. They must purge through careful, intense physical rituals to strain the physical and mental hold one's mind of worldly beings; when catharsis is achieved, the purge has achieved mental serenity.
- Meditative gauntlets
The faithful engage in physical gauntlets to exhaust their physical bodies and beyond, testing their limits of endurance, such as extraneous and daunting treks under hostile conditions with ascetic guiding principles of denying themselves indulgences in food or water and only consuming the bare essentials. The aim is to achieve physical exhaustion and mental release as a consequence of breaking one's limits of endurance to the point of losing control over one's body. A gauntlet can be undertaken in a more frequent and controlled manner as a form of meditation without going beyond physical endurance; Intensive exercise can be undertaken to the point of a more mundane exhaustion that will release the mental strain within and flood the mind with serene satisfaction.